“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

I feel so joyful about celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. day. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. The high school I attended was white, white, white as far as the eye could see. Many local schools celebrated MLK day. Ours did not. It enraged me. I thought it undeniably racist to not celebrate such an important day in a community with a history so closely tied to the civil rights movement…in a city of water canons spraying people…in a city of police dogs…in a city of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombings… and those four girls. I was incensed. I led a sit-in in my high school thinking I could do something to change the injustice I saw. It was the late eighties…not a particularly protest-y moment in time. A lot of kids sat with me…until the bell rang. Most got up and went to class. The principal walked by my tiny group hitting his wooden paddle against his thigh- letting us know what to expect if we stayed there. That was all. It petered out. It was over. But we all have a tiny voice. Martin Luther King, Jr’s voice was resounding and is still being heard today. I told my four year old about MLK today. My husband tried to hush me…to protect our son from what he didn’t need to know. But I think he needs to know that people look different from each other and we sound different from each other and we think differently from one another and we come from different places, but we all have blood in our veins and hopes in our beating hearts…hearts which can be full of love and light and peace, if we so choose. And we can celebrate the differences we see in each other and be curious about them instead of afraid. We can ask our friends about their cultural heritages so we can know them better. These are the same lessons we try to teach pre-schoolers on the playground and yet, we adults still need the reminder, don’t we? Enjoy this day. Every day should be MLK day, shouldn’t it? read more